Germany in Travail

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW WHEN a national crisis reaches the point where old standards are discredited and new standards are demanded, the universities must clearly manifest their worth and prove the genuineness of their liberalism. For if liberalism be genuine, it will have not only the insight and the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II EDUCATION, OLD AND NEW WHEN a national crisis reaches the point where old standards are discredited and new standards are demanded, the universities must clearly manifest their worth and prove the genuineness of their liberalism. For if liberalism be genuine, it will have not only the insight and the freedom from prejudice to make thorough and minute analysis of accustomed habits, but it will also have a full appreciation of those elements in the old standards which are still representative of the nation's life. By such liberalism alone can the universities lay the foundation for a revaluation. In former crises, in the eighteenth century and in the movement that culminated in the Revolution of 1848, the universities took a leading part in liberalizing thought. Today they are generally considered the centers of reaction, and in their passionate fight against the new they renounce even the freedom they attained in former struggles and champion the prejudices of feudal days. Upon examination you find that in the materializing process of Prussia, especially during recent decades, the universities were more completely caught in the machine than any other of the large national institutions. This machine, cleverly conscious of its advantage, had made the universities into great training schools for its public and confidential servants. The university degree was an unfailing recommendation to the innumerable positions of trust which the system controlled in foreign service and in every conceivable branch of public lifewithin the empire: in administration, in judicial service, and in church and school. The command of the army alone, and a few positions of highest dignity in other branches, were preserved as prerogatives of birth. If only education was consistent with the aims a...